Justin Cooney

Web Development Tips and Examples

recent posts

about

I am a Senior Applications Programmer / Analyst with years of experience developing enterprise solutions using the Microsoft technology stack including C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET, AJAX, IIS and SQL Server. I specialize in Web application development with a focus on building secure systems, integrating applications, and designing robust database structures.

  • Outlook 2007 Image Distortion in Email

    Problems with Images in Emails

    I have noticed strange image distortions happening when I embed an image in an Outlook email message. I’m not talking about adding the image as an attachment, but about directly embedding the image in an HTML-formatted email message so that it immediately shows for the recipient.

    The strange thing is that this will happen rather randomly. About 70% of the time embedded image shows up perfectly at the receiving end. However it’s the remaining 30% that’s been a concern because the image will either arrive with:

    • Significant quality loss
    • Sizing distortions
    • Only partially rendering

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  • Outlook Custom Add-In to Archive Emails on Send Based on Keyword in Subject Line (Visual Studio 2010)

    Background

    The great thing about the Microsoft technology stack is that things tend to work together without the need to download and install unfamiliar libraries from unknown sources.  I continue to be impressed by how Microsoft centralizes its code libraries with Visual Studio and .NET 4 to make most development tasks quite seamless.

    For example I am working on an add-on component for MS Outlook 2007 that will help people archive their sent emails by including a keyword in the subject line of their email.

    Visual Studio has default project templates for Office, including templates for Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010. Happily enough, the code required to interface with Outlook is auto-generated behind the scenes and the programmer simply has to worry about writing the actual logic of the component. This is a big step forward from how things used to be!

    Another big plus for my development efforts is the set-up and deployment project template that Microsoft has included with Visual Studio. Once my Outlook component has been fully coded I can simply create a Deployment project to send out to users. That way a user can install my component simply by clicking the ‘Next’ button on an installer wizard.

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  • The Default zIndex of a JQuery UI Dialog

    While I was working with a JQuery UI dialog today I noticed that some of the absolutely positioned layers on my page would overlap with a JQuery UI dialog when dragging the dialog object across the form. This broke the basic movement option of the dialog and would be unacceptable for users of the Web page.

    The reason for the overlap was that the z-index of some layers on the page were at a higher index level than the default index level of the dialog. This led me to ask the question: what exactly is the default z-index of an unmodified  JQuery UI dialog?

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